Abercrombie & Fitch: Beauty's unacceptable face

To work at Abercrombie & Fitch you must 'look great’: it is written in the
staff rule book, learns Jemima Lewis.

Jemima Lewis

4:47PM BST 27 Jun 2009

Some years ago, in a mall in Los Angeles, I strolled past a shop I had never heard of called Abercrombie & Fitch – and then reversed back with my eyes on springs, to take a second look. A young man with the body of a Greek god was lounging in the doorway in flip-flops and a pair of shorts so trifling that a few wisps of golden pubic hair could be seen frothing over the top.

He would have looked underdressed on the beach, let alone in a clothes shop, yet he appeared quite unembarrassed. His job, so far as I could tell (and I studied him closely for some time) was simply to stand there, wearing his Colgate smile and looking outrageously handsome, like a living mannequin.

At the time, it seemed so crazily all-American – this coming together of consumerism, pornography and corn-fed, golden-skinned wholesomeness – that it made me laugh out loud. But now that it's happening over here, it seems rather less comical.

Abercrombie & Fitch is being sued by one of its British shop workers, Riam Dean, who claims she was hidden in a back room because she has a prosthetic arm. Miss Dean, 22, was hired to work at the London branch of the chain, but given a white cardigan to hide the prosthesis. Alas, the cardi soon fell foul of company policy, which requires shop assistants – or "models", as they are officially called – to wear each season's "key look".

Miss Dean claims she was repeatedly rebuked for wearing the cardi, before being swept off the shop floor altogether by a manager who accused her of "breaking the look policy", and consigned her to the stockroom. When she called the head office for advice, she was allegedly told to remain in the stockroom until the long-sleeved winter uniform came in.

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Miss Dean claims her treatment amounts to a "blatant policy of eugenics", which is going a bit far. Abercrombie & Fitch have not, as far as we know, resorted to selective breeding in order to produce their master race of sexy shop assistants. But there is no question that the company is guilty of prejudice – albeit not the kind Miss Dean is talking about.

In order to work at Abercrombie & Fitch, you must "look great": it is written in the staff rule book. And not just subjectively great, as in the eye of the beholder, but a particular kind of great. Your style must be "classic American", your hair "clean and natural", your fingernails extending no more than a quarter of an inch beyond your fingertips. The look is fresh, young, preppy and mercilessly body-conscious.

Miss Dean – with her pretty face, olive skin and nubile figure – fits the bill nicely, and got the job. But what of those of us less fortunate in our genetic heritage? Is it my fault that I'm getting on a bit, with wonky teeth and a lingering propensity to spots? Am I to be barred from a career in clothing retail simply because my DNA is not built for hot pants?

We are born beautiful or not, just as surely as we are born black or white, disabled or otherwise. This may seem a frivolous comparison, but it is not. In an age when every other form of discrimination is pounced upon and punished, the tyranny of beauty is a reminder that you cannot legislate away unfairness.

Because it is an amorphous quality, easy to recognise but hard to define, beauty – like cleverness – slips through the cracks of our intolerance towards bigotry. "It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness," wrote Tolstoy – and this is truer today than ever.

Many studies have shown that it's harder to get a job if you happen to be born with a face like a dropped pie. Not to be, at the very least, groomed and tweaked into an approximation of the homogenous ideal is considered an abnegation of duty: a sign that you don't "look after yourself".

This prejudice is as foolish and unjust as any other, and there is no redress. The court will decide whether Miss Dean has been a victim of discrimination; but there is little doubt that she has been its beneficiary too.